The Correlation Between Students’ Attitudes and Persistence in E-Learning

Background: For a long time, “attitude” was considered an effective factor in student-teacher interaction and students’ progress in traditional education. Recently, it is studied as a motivational factor in learners’ engagement in distance and e-learning education. Objectives: This study tried to find out the correlation between “attitude” and “persistence” in e-learning education. Methods: To explore the probable correlation between students’ attitudes and their persistence in e-learning systems a survey was conducted to seek students’ attitudes toward online course, online interaction, and some of e-communication tools, namely online chat, discussion forum, and e-mail. A sample of 744 students was obtained from 5,285 e-learning undergraduate students who were formally accepted to study in online courses at three Iranian universities from 2014 to 2017. The instruments were two researcher-made questionnaires for persistent and non-persistent students in e-learning systems. Results: Findings showed a positive, direct, and significant relationship between students’ persistence and their attitudes toward online course (r = 0.744; P = 0.014) and online interaction (r = 0.863; P = 0.001) in e-learning. Also, there was a relationship between students’ attitudes toward online interaction with the frequency of student-professor interaction (r = 0.943, P 0.001) and the frequency of student-student interaction (r = 0.793, P = 0.006). Conclusions: The observed positive and significant relationship between students’ attitudes toward online interaction and persistence showed that students’ persistence can be increased through enhancing student-professor and student-student interactions in e-learning systems.